Texas needs higher education reform

DICK ARMEY, HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Published 5:30 am, Monday, April 18, 2011

As a former economics professor at Austin College and the University of North Texas, I have seen firsthand the great potential of Texas students in higher education. Yet my 20 years in academia taught me that universities often serve the comfort and security of the faculty rather than fostering the potential of these students.

Texas students deserve the very best education. As Gov. Perry recently said, "Our universities are not fulfilling their essential mission in our culture, which is to teach our children." For example, the University of Texas at Austin is the highest-ranked university in Texas and has the third-largest endowment in the country. But the latest U.S. News poll ranks UT-Austin as only 47th best in the nation.

It has become more common for Texans to leave the state to pursue college degrees from higher-ranked universities elsewhere.

Texas clearly has fallen behind other states in higher education. At the same time, tuition at public universities has skyrocketed while Texan families are struggling to make ends meet. Since 1994, tuition at Texas public universities has increased at an average rate of 9.8 percent annually. These soaring costs have done little to help Texas students. A public opinion survey released by the Texas Public Policy Foundation found that 80 percent of Texas voters think Texas colleges and universities can be run more efficiently.

Eliminating tenure offers an important step toward improving education. My university experience suggests that tenure provides everyone who has it the ability to bully everyone who does not.

I strongly believe that tenure is destructive to academic freedom. At a minimum, professors should be required to demonstrate actual teaching skills before receiving tenure.

Taxpayers should not be forced to write a blank check for tenured professors to do as they please. Gov. Perry and I have both recommended free market reforms that would tie school funding to academic results. Gov. Perry has successfully enacted merit pay for K-12 public schooling; a similar system for higher education would likely boost the rankings of our colleges and universities nationwide.

A professor's main goal should be to serve the educational needs of students. Yet in most Texas universities research has displaced teaching. A Texas Performance Review found that the average professor at a research university teaches only 1.9 courses per semester. Roughly 22 percent of faculty members do not teach a single course. We could easily remove administrative bloat and reduce tuition by requiring universities to separate research and teaching budgets.

Another big step would be to restructure university administration in ways that eliminate the faculty's iron grip over questions of governance. Administrators should be allowed to administrate, with a rigorous system of vertical lines of authority. This would eliminate the cronyism that dominates our current universities while allowing decisions on curriculum and personnel to be made on the basis of need and merit creating a more efficient student-centered environment.

Texas should not settle for anything less than world-renowned universities. The incentives in our higher education system should attract the best professors and researchers in the world and provide our students the best education possible.

Let's start by allowing researchers to keep up to 90 percent of the research dollars they generate instead of the 50 percent that is typically the limit today. Disclosing the salaries of tenured professors would be another useful reform, along with how many students they teach and how many funded research dollars they bring in. At Texas A&M University, only 49 out of 3,000 faculty members brought in enough money to pay for their salaries and overhead over the past five years.

Higher education reform in Texas is a win-win. Professors would be paid based on how well they teach rather than some fancy title and students would receive a better education. These reforms put students first by refocusing the incentives of professors so they better serve the students for which the universities were created.

With tuition rates and taxes at all-time highs, Texas universities are obligated to provide a better service to students. Reform is long overdue. Texas' future competitiveness in the world hangs in the balance.

Armey, the former majority leader of the House of Representatives, is the chairman of FreedomWorks, a nationwide grass-roots organization fighting for lower taxes, less government and freedom, and the author of "Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto."